Sunday, January 31, 2010

Update: Judicial Watch provided separate documents from an earlier FOIA request which show that "most, if not all" of the flights did indeed have the Speaker aboard. This is being researched and, until complete, corrections are noted below.

Earlier: This post serves as an update to yesterday's original revelations that military jets appear to have been improperly utilized by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to shuttle her children and grandchildren around the country.

Is it a legitimate use of military jets to transport the Speaker of the House and her favored Congressional coterie for routine travel? Even if you believe it is -- and, personally, I do not -- any rational taxpayer would admit that it is monumental waste of money. Military flights cost between $5,000 and $20,000 per hour to operate. The Speaker and her passengers routinely reimburse the Air Force $120 to $400 for each flight.

Worse still, she also appears to have liberally requisitioned entire flights for the personal use of her used these flights to shuttle her children and grandchildren back and forth to DC. That is, unaccompanied by any member of Congress, her kids, in-laws and grandchildren are utilizing entire using military passenger jets for their routine travel needs.

22-Feb-2007: A military jet is used for the travel needs of the Speaker's son, Paul Jr.

13-Apr-2007: A military jet is utilized for the travel of the Speaker's daughter, son-in-law and grandson.

15-Jun-2007: A military jet is used for the travel needs of the Speaker's son, Paul Jr.

09-Jul-2007: A military jet is used for the travel needs of the Speaker's son, Paul Jr.

13-Jan-2008: A military jet is used for the travel needs of Paul Pelosi, Jr., son of the Speaker.

29-Sep-2008: A military jet is used for the travel needs of Paul Pelosi, Jr., son of the Speaker.

30-Oct-2008: A military jet is used for the Speaker's daughter and a son-in-law, Peter Kaufman.

25-Nov-2008: A military jet is used for the Speaker's daughter, her son-in-law and two grandchildren.

* * *

This is not an exhaustive list by any stretch. On dozens of occasions, various of the Pelosi children and grandchildren appear to have traveled with (or possibly even without) the Speaker.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi -- in my humble opinion -- has abused her office by using military jets for the travel convenience of her children. It would seem that the instances highlighted above constitute, at minimum, a complete disregard for the American taxpayer's funds.

Pelosi must resign. Or she should be forcibly removed out of office. These activities, if not outright criminal, smell to high heaven.

[Alexander said] the embattled Holder likely made the decision to read Miranda rights to accused underpants bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, after 50 minutes of interrogation by the FBI...

"Perhaps he should step down," Alexander said on Sunday morning.

"(Holder's) doing a better job of interrogating CIA employees than he is of interrogating terrorists, and he's not making a distinction between enemy combatants and terrorists flying into Detroit trying to blow up planes and American citizens who are committing a crime. He needs to go to Congress and say I made that decision, and here's why. And based on that perhaps he should step down," Alexander explained.

"Over time they have had additional opporutinties [sic] to question; my sense is that he has given very valuable information. ... We have not lost anything by how his case has been handled," Axelrod said.

Axelrod's expertise in counterterror investigations, interrogations, intelligence-gathering, analysis and warfare is well-known throughout the Beltway.

The transition from a soft tyranny to a hard tyranny can be slow or sudden. It might seem inexorable, like the tide, or happen in a rapid burst of events so as to appear nearly instantaneous.

The government that tells you how much water your toilet can use, what kind of car you can drive, what type of light bulb is permissible, how much carbon dioxide can be emitted by every business, what kind of medicines you are eligible to receive, what kind of health care specialists you are permitted to see, whether or not you will be forced to join a union -- well, my friends, that government is on the move.

Freedom is a precious thing and -- once lost -- nearly impossible to regain.

After three years of procedural delays and another 18 months of jury selection, the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is set to begin.

Alan Dershowitz: Your honor, the defense would like to enter a motion for dismissal.

Judge Schwartz: On what grounds, counselor?

Alan Dershowitz: The accused was never given his Miranda rights, the arresting authorities entered his domicile without a search warrant, he was denied counsel and held in harsh conditions in an overseas prison for over three years, all his confessions and self-incriminating statements were extracted there under torture rendering them inadmissible and this entire proceeding unconstitutional.

Judge Schwartz: Anything else, Mr. Dershowitz?

Alan Dershowitz: Yes, your honor. My client maintains his innocence.

Judge Schwartz: Motion to dismiss granted. The defendant is free to leave. The jury is dismissed. Court is adjourned.

• When it snows in Washington, Dick Cheney doesn't put chains on his tires, but instead uses hippies.

• Dick Cheney's favorite snack? Souls.

• Ants have the proportional strength of Dick Cheney.

• For the past 32 years during his family's Christmas dinner Dick Cheney has carved and served the turkey pardoned by the President at Thanksgiving.

• In most places where West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil is pumped and sold, it is actually referred to by its more common name, "light, sweet Cheney."

• Dick Cheney was bitten by a radioactive spider in high school, imparting to the spider Cheney-like powers.

• When a new senator places his hand on the book to be sworn in, very few realize it is actually the Necronomicon until Cheney laughs and tells them "you're mine now".

• The only thing hard enough to cut Dick Cheney is Dick Cheney.

• While on a sex-spree in a Tijuana [brothel], Dick Cheney used a live cougar as a condom... The bodycount was fourteen Mexican [hookers] and one cougar... In Tijuana, they refer to this as "The Night of the Sodomizing Cougar-Man." Dick Cheney refers to it as "last Thursday."

• Bathes every night in the warm, viscous plasma of freshly killed Iraqi insurgents to keep his skin soft.

• After turning down an offer from Mafia Don, Cheney woke up with a horse head in his bed one morning. He grabbed it, held it like a teddy bear, and went back to sleep.

• It is widely believed that free-range chickens are far superior to captive ones, as they result in a more tender, juicy, healthful meal. Dick Cheney believes this too, but about homeless people.

• Dick Cheney refuses to obey the First Law of Thermodynamics on principle.

• Cheney's birth weight was 12 pounds 7 ounces, but had to be revised to 6 pounds 11 ounces after circumcision.

• Dick Cheney carries a leather bag filled with one tooth from the mouth of every man he's murdered in cold blood. The bag is forty feet in diameter and weighs approximately six tons. When Harry Reid pisses him off, he just points to his Big Bag O' Teeth and mouths out the words, "There's still room."

• Dick Cheney blocked the filming of The Lord of the Rings for forty years, because he deemed Elves "too f***ing faggy." Production could only begin once he was busy running for the Vice Presidency.

• Dich Cheney's measured, elegant speaking style belies the fact that he opens all Senate sessions with "Listen up, motherf***ers.", and then throws a gavel at Barbara Boxer.

• As CEO of Halliburton, executives from rival megacorporations would attempt to kill or capture Cheney to ransom him for Halliburton stocks. Cheney survived all 273 such attacks, his Wyoming ranch uses their skulls to mark his territory.

• His snarl was formed at an early age. While breastfeeding, he'd tell his dad to "Back the f*** off."

• In a bow to conservationsists, Dick Cheney converted his SUV. It now runs on orphans. And puppies. And orphan puppies. Also, it gets 1 mpg city, 3 freeway. And he never leaves the city.

• Doctors turn their head when Dick Cheney coughs.

• Most people don't know Cheney has a soft side. One time he executed a waiter at a resturant with a steak knife (the waiter was late coming with Dick's steak sauce). Saddened by what he had done, Cheney wept openly for a full minute. Then he cut out the waiter's heart and ate it, tears running down his cheeks.

• In quatrain X 75, Nostradamus wrote: A horse-like man, the king he'll rule - to take black gold in eastern soil - A name of chayne, fooler of fools - Anti-Christ to hats of foyle

• To this day, John Edwards often wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, terrified that the last thing he's going to hear before he dies is the words "Let me simply thank the senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much."

• Toughest part of George Bush's job - convincing Cheney to give better justification in meetings with foreign dignitaries than "Because that's just the f***in' way I want it."

Included on the 20-page application is a recommended reading list that includes the most radical propaganda literature imaginable. Prominent on the list: Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, which is a step-by-step guide to the violent overthrow of the United States government.

An Atlas reader, Chuck, has a student in the eleventh grade in an Ohio High School. Her government class passed out this propaganda recruiting paper so students could sign up as interns for Obama's Organizing for America (OFA is the former mybarackobama.com site.)

“The Radical does not sit frozen by cold objectivity. He sees injustice and strikes at it with hot passion. He is a man of decision and action. There is a saying that the Liberal is one who walks out of the room when the argument turns into a fight... Society has good reason to fear the Radical. Every shaking advance of mankind toward equality and justice has come from the Radical. He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous. Conservative interests know that while Liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of Conservatives." -- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Obama is using our public school system to recruit for his Alinsky-inspired private army. Organizing for America is (and I quote) recruiting in our high schools to "build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda"...

"Radicals precipitate the social crisis by action – by using power… The Radical recognizes that constant dissension and conflict is and has been the fire under the boiler of democracy. He firmly believes in that brave saying of a brave people, 'Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!'" -- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

This is incredible. And evil... [and] This is no accident. Obama is poisoning our public school system. He acts as if it's his own private breeding farm. Once again academic learning and achievement is hopelessly abandoned, and supplanted by radical leftist activism from the left-wing Alinsky indoctrinators in the [union-controlled] public school system.

"The Radical may resort to the sword but when he does he is not filled with hatred against those individuals whom he attacks. He hates these individuals not as persons but as symbols representing ideas or interests which he believes to be inimical to the welfare of the people… That is the reason why Radicals, although frequently embarking upon revolutions, have rarely resorted to personal terrorism." -- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Children must be advised to expose this ugly propaganda. Children must tell their parents how they are being used and manipulated. Parents, warn your kids. Better yet, home school.

But I'm sure the Democrats would be okay if the tables were turned and, say, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove had recruited and organized high school students into GOP political action wings.

This is, at minimum, outrageous. Any attorneys out there? How could this be legal?

Saturday, January 30, 2010

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said on Saturday he expected Iraq to become the world's top oil producer in six to seven years...

Iraq has signed a series of oilfield development deals with global oil firms -- which bid on prime fields at two energy auctions last year -- in a nation with the world's third largest crude reserves, emerging from years of conflict and sanctions.

...The OPEC oil producers group is likely to try to get Iraq to curb output rather than pump all its extra capacity onto the market, analysts say.

"We are not interested to flood the market with oil. Our future policy is to get higher revenues for Iraq rather than higher production and flooding the market," Shahristani said.

Had we listened to the likes of Barack Obama and Harry Reid, Iraq would have been surrendered to Al Qaeda long ago.

[We] noted yesterday the economy's strong resurgence in the fourth quarter--great news, seemingly. Yet the stock market was down on Friday. Why? Investors Business Daily offered this explanation:

[R]ight now, the market seems to be saying: "It's the policies, stupid." Specifically, the socialistic policies that the Obama administration keeps pushing at Americans who know that's not the way this great country was built.

It isn't just the efforts to socialize medicine or nationalize the car industry or control banks or punish both consumers and industry for climate variations that have little to do with it either. It's every initiative that comes out of this White House.

Of course, you can't draw any conclusions from a day's or a week's performance of the market. But IBD offers this comparison, which seems revealing:

President Obama's lack of private sector experience is probably his single biggest weakness. The fact that he does not value such experience in his top advisers shows a serious lack of judgment. One would think that if Obama wants to run automobile companies, banks, insurance companies and who knows what else, he would want to have someone on hand who has done it before.

"... you've got kids or you've got grandkids -- they need to make sure that they've got the same security that Medicare provides seniors." President Obama, speech at the Organizing for America National Health Care Forum, August 2009

"... at the pace we're on right now, Medicare is going to run out of money in eight years." President Obama, same speech.

Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, in Newsweek's Feb. 1 issue:

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration judged incorrectly that Iran was on the verge of revolution and decided that dealing directly with Tehran would provide a lifeline to an evil government soon to be swept away by history's tide. A valuable opportunity to limit Iran's nuclear program may have been lost as a result. The incoming Obama administration reversed this approach and expressed a willingness to talk to Iran without preconditions. . . . And if diplomacy failed, Obama reasoned, it would be easier to build domestic and international support for more robust sanctions. At the time, I agreed with him.

I've changed my mind. The nuclear talks are going nowhere. The Iranians appear intent on developing the means to produce a nuclear weapon; there is no other explanation for the secret uranium-enrichment facility discovered near the holy city of Qum. Fortunately, their nuclear program appears to have hit some technical snags, which puts off the need to decide whether to launch a preventive strike. Instead we should be focusing on another fact: Iran may be closer to profound political change than at any time since the revolution that ousted the shah 30 years ago. . . .

Critics will say promoting regime change will encourage Iranian authorities to tar the opposition as pawns of the West. But the regime is already doing so.

###

Now we know what it takes to have a brilliant career in “diplomacy.” Keep "changing mind" from one stupid, failed position to another; carefully avoid the only policies that can actually solve the problems; hope no one notices; cover tracks in Newsweek, et. al.; add to C.V.; build suit and tie collection; collect paychecks.

Update: Judicial Watch provided separate documents from an earlier FOIA request which show that "most, if not all" of the flights did indeed have the Speaker aboard. This is being researched and, until complete, corrections are noted below.

Earlier: This post is updated here and it would appear that military jets may have been improperly utilized by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to shuttle her children and grandchildren around the country.

Meet the Pelosi family! Using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Judicial Watch uncovered thousands of pages of travel documents related to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's use of military aircraft.

What hasn't been revealed thus far is that military aircraft are being used to shuttle Pelosi's kids and grandkids between DC and San Francisco time and time again, which appears to be a violation of the appropriate rules (see above). Put simply, the United States Air Force is serving as a multi-billion dollar chauffeur- and baby-sitting service for Nancy Pelosi's kids and grandkids -- presumably because commercial travel is beneath the families of the autocrats.

But this couldn't be a waste of resources because the U.S. military really isn't engaged in any other significant activities around the world.

Even if you assume that the Speaker's use of military jets for her personal travel is legitimate (a big "if" -- and here's an example of such a use), it would appear the Speaker is shipping her kids and grandkids across the country -- without any real Congressional delegation on board -- by using the military as a family shuttle service!

Here's an example of the kids traveling with the Speaker.

The cost for some flights: as much as $18,000 an hour.

Here's but one example of the Speaker's kids traveling by military aircraft!

In this case, Nancy's son hitches a ride.

But here's another example of the Pelosi kids traveling in style and reimbursing the Air Force at Coach rates.

Other kids -- again -- stylin' courtesy of the taxpayer.

In this case, the Speaker's son travels on a military jet.

Here are the kids jetting back and forth again.

Hubby and kids are transported -- reimbursing the Air Force at maybe $400 a seat.

Pelosi's kids travel once more with the Queen.

In this instance, Pelosi's relatives hitch a ride on a Congressional flight.

The kids and grandkids tag along.

Favored sycophant Anna Eschoo (D-Socialist California) is in good graces -- she gets her own military jet.

In-flight food is never a problem... hundreds of pages of receipts for food and beverages were included in the FOIA documents.

Another House Democrat gets her own flight, presumably because she slavishly votes the Pelosi line.

Wine and beer, anyone?

In this case, domestic flights are operating at the discounted price of around $35,000 per -- the Pelosi kids are kind enough, presumably, to reimburse the Air Force at around $400 a head.

Hubby needed a ride.

Hey, we're going to Japan! Let's bring the whole posse!

Oops. They lost their receipt!

Oops -- the receipt didn't reproduce well. Reimburse 'em anyways.

You stupid little taxpayers: pick up the bar tab, dammit!

With the economy in a shambles and teetering on the brink of disaster thanks to the insane policies of the Democrats, this kind of waste is an outrage.